Today, the 3rd December, the feast of our patron, St. Francis Xavier, the dashing Jesuit Spaniard, a nobleman who renounced his castle and high society in Spain to do our Lord's bidding, to toil in our Lord's vineyard and plant the seed of a new faith in our land. The warm embers of Christian faith,
At first he was disinclined to religious order, but at his mentor's St Ignatius Loyola beckoning and his sage advise on the futility of worlds' glories and crowns expressed in the Gospels, Mark 8:36 "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" . He was ordained a priest in 1537 in Venice and then sojourned to Lisbon, Portugal from where, he would set sail to Goa, India, With Goa, then under Portugal suzerainty as his base, he plunged in to depths of Asia to preach the Gospels. A new Kingdom, not of this world, our true and lasting abode, where we'll be there forever for eternity, in body and soul, just as we live and breathe here today.
He traversed the huge continent of Asia, and faced many a threat to his life but it did not deter him and finally wild fever struck him and he breathed his last and left for heavenly abode in a remote corner of Asia Shangchuan Island, Taishan, China, on 3rd December 1552.
He now dwells among us in a Basilica of Bom Jesus at Old Goa, for some five hundred years now, his incorruptible body, a relic kept in a silver casket, exposed to elements, defying mother nature's physical laws of decay to await the final resurrection and our Lord's Second Coming in glory, when we'll all come alive yes, bodily again. there is no better proof than the incorruptible relics of the Saints that the last day is ahead and for certain.
Like everything else in our contemporary times, our saint is subject to calumny, lies with fake news, false quotes, innuendos. but not once did he suggest in his letters to the Portuguese King or the Pope in the 16th century, in the original and authentic translation of St Francis Letters by Sir Henry James Coleridge, to establish an office of Holy Inquisition in Goa and same be visited upon natives.
There are some dubious quotes by other biased translators but obviously we cannot have two different translation for the same manuscript and we'll stand by Sir Henry James Coleridge authentic version.
Through his letters you could find his discomfort, sometimes bordering rage at the colonial regime with their indolent and corrupt ways that thwarted his missionary zeal.
It will be against the grain of Christ teaching to preach Good News with the use of Inquisition or as a tool for forced conversion or any inducement, Christ command was to move on, ".. whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them"
but its true our Holy Church in its long two thousand years of existence ensconced in this world has absorb its filth and evil, and in order to quell heresy and superstition in very illiterate dark Europe where witches and black magic did abound, veered from the Gospels and Christ had so forewarned us about wolves in sheep clothing's in our Church, the establishment of Inquisition office in the Church.
In the end, Our Church did repent and amended its ways and there is more rejoicing in heaven above for the those who repent, than for the self righteous who do not .
In the inquisition annals there is a famous case of Joan Of Arc, the French patriot who rallied her countrymen but was intercepted by the English forces. And later burnt at stake after her long ordeal with the English Inquisition cabal and in her final hours as the flames swept around her she begged forgiveness for her Inquisitors just like our Lord in his final dying moment " forgive them, for they know not what they do" and today our Church has rightly declared her as a saint and not a heretic.
After St Francis Xavier passed away, the Inquisition office with its tribunal was established in Goa, and has had its share of victims,.
But many waters have flowed through our river Mandovi, today our Saint is synonymous as guardian and Protector of Goa and affectionately referred as "Goencho Saib" by people of all walks of life.
Happy Feast!
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